This post was scheduled to go out yesterday: I held it over due to the continuing election coverage.
Today’s a pretty big day. Yesterday was the UK general election, so by now we may know who’s in charge of the country for the next 5 years (although I suspect we won’t). [Edit: well, that shows how much I know!]
Anyway, having checked back in my emails, today’s a big day for me, if no-one else. It’s the first anniversary of the day I received an email from the short fiction editor at the Londonist website, saying that they would like to publish a story I wrote.
It was the first story I’d written in rather a long time (we’re definitely talking years here). I’d been on a one-day writing course at work and, being me, I spotted a tweet from Londonist and decided to make use of my new learning in a slightly different context. So I wrote the story, messed around with it a bit, ran it past my husband and a long-suffering colleague who’d been on the writing course too, crossed my fingers, and sent it in.
Five days later, they said yes. If they hadn’t said yes, I hope I would have been resilient and carried on writing. But you never know.
And that yes was the beginning of more stories, and this blog, and joining the FlashDogs, and getting into print, and (sometimes) getting money for writing, and starting to write a book, and of course learning that not all stories get accepted first time round!
So, happy writing birthday to me. I’m so glad I started. It’s been a wonderful adventure so far, and I can’t wait to see what happens next!
If you would like to read the story in question, here it is: London Falls.
The featured image is Birthday Cake – Candles by Jessica Diamond and is reproduced by permission of Creative Commons license 2.0. The image has been cropped a tiny bit so that the candle flames show in the header.
Liz Hedgecock 